Curated OER
Global Resources: What Will You Do with Your Power?
Students examine the human impact on natural resources. They read and discuss an article, evaluate nations regarding their environmental problem-solving, develop a presidential speech on the environment, and conduct a natural resources...
Curated OER
WorldWatcher Activity: What Happens to Sunlight?
Students examine a set of data to try to determine the amount of cloud cover. In groups, they make a list of items that reflect light in the atmosphere and how different amounts of it can change the temperature. Using WorldWatcher,...
Curated OER
Water Cycle in a Box
Fourth graders investigate how the water cycle is vital for all living things to survive on Earth. They observe the teacher set up a simulation of the water cycle using a Plastic Earth Simulator, desk lamp, and water, and make...
Curated OER
Weathering Rocks
Fourth graders investigate what natural events cause rocks to break apart and differentiate between erosion and weathering. They conduct an experiment with plaster of paris to observe why some rocks are hard and others break, and...
Curated OER
A Comparison of Land and Water Temperature
Students examine NASA satellite observations of surface temperature and investigate the seasonal changes of land and water temperature.
Curated OER
Biochemical Cycles
When learning about several different processes at a time, it can be difficult to differentiate between them. In the resource found here, you can see what your kids know about some of Earth's systems including the carbon, hydrologic,...
Curated OER
Weather Lesson 1
Students describe and compare the layers of the atmosphere. They explain how to measure the temperature of the atmosphere. They also explain what causes the atmosphere to heat up in some places more than in others.
Curated OER
Which Falls Faster?
Second graders study force and what it does. In this motion lesson students complete a demonstration on force and gravity and share their ideas.
Curated OER
Mapping Ancient Coastlines
Most of this lesson is spent working on the "Bathymetry Worksheet." It includes a graph of the changes in sea level over the past 150,000 years and a bathymetric map of changes in an imaginary coastline over time. Participants answer...
University of Wisconsin
A Rain Garden Year
Pupils become plants in an interpretive play that depicts what happens throughout the seasons in a rain garden. As you narrate, students bloom, flower, and go to seed accordingly. The lesson is first in a series of lessons written for...
Curated OER
Science: What Is a Barometer?
Fourth graders discover how barometers help to predict the weather. Using newspapers, they examine the weather forecast and determine the meaning of high and low as they pertain to pressure. After making cluster diagrams, 4th graders...
Curated OER
What is the Rock Cycle?
Young scholars investigate the rock cycle. In this geology lesson, students read about the rock cycle on a website and discuss the steps of the rock cycle. Young scholars visit a rock cycle website to complete a quiz. This is the first...
Curated OER
Plate Tectonics: Surface and Subsurface Processes
Eighth graders explore the geological process of plate tectonics. In this plate tectonic lesson, 8th graders design, construct and present a working model of a plate tectonics concept. This lesson includes a rubric, worksheets, and 2...
Curated OER
Great Blobs of Jelly!
Students explain how zoo-plankton have an impact on the global process. In this ocean zoo-plankton lesson students calculate carbon flux and plankton densities.
Curated OER
A Moving Experience
Students visit Time Machine's San Francisco Earthquake Era. They understand how the Earth's layers interact to cause changes in the Earth's surface. They review information about earthquakes and Earth's layers.
Curated OER
How's the Air Up There?
Learners experiment with soda cans and water to discover why air pressure is greater closer to Earth's surface.
Curated OER
Rock Sorting Activity
Learners organize rock samples according to their properties. In this earth science lesson, students predict whether they are igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary. They compare their prediction with the actual type.
Curated OER
Stressed to a Fault!
Eighth graders describe how stress builds up in the Earth's crust by the movement of tectonic plates. In groups, they relate the three types of stresses to the types of plate movements and explain how the stress causes faults to form. ...
Curated OER
Image Classification
Students explore what are "multi-spectral" or "multi-band" images? They investigate how landscapes change over time- at least over the time-span of satellite imagery, particulary due to human influences. Students explore how to train...
Curated OER
Drought
Students gain knowledge about the impact of drought in agriculture. They investigate soil types, water flow, and various erosion conditions which occur during a drought and see how farming practices changed after the 1930's.
Curated OER
What the Sun Can Do
Students develop and test a unique, personally-relevant hypothesis about the consequences of exposure to UV radiation based units on a living organism, common baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae).
North American Montessori Center
Sun and Moon Autumnal Equinox Activities
Two hands-on activities celebrate the sun and moon autumnal equinox. First, scholars create a cairn using a shoebox, flashlight, and drawing tools to view the sun's progression. Second, learners take to the kitchen to bake mooncakes...
Curated OER
Stream Ecology In Wisconsin and Puerto Rico
Students identify the different types of water and explain in what proportions they exist on Earth. They identify and correctly label the parts of the water cycle and how these parts interact with each other. Students identify the...